Achi news desk-
The first election was held on May 6, 1999, and just six days later, rather poignantly on the fifth anniversary of the untimely death of the late Labor leader John Smith, the new Parliament convened in its temporary home, the Assembly Hall on the Hill, for the first time.
I vividly remember the procession that went up the Royal Mile to mark the official opening of the Scottish Parliament on 1 July 1999, watching it on television from my hospital bed in Yorkhill.
Although I was only 10 years old at the time, a child of devolution, I could sense that this was a significant moment in our nation’s history – great hopes abounded for this new voice in the country, highlighted by the mandate of three-quarters of Scots who voted in the 1997 referendum.
I’m proud that the last Labor government delivered devolution to Scotland, and I’m proud of what Labor achieved while in government at Holyrood: free bus travel for over 60s, free baby places, the smoking ban and unprecedented investment in our NHS with almost 700 more doctors and over 5000 nurses More, to mention just a few achievements.
Looking back on a quarter of a century of devolution, it is clear to me that the Scottish Parliament has now established itself as the primary seat of political power in the collective consciousness of the people of Scotland.
Looking to the next quarter of a century and beyond, Parliament must continue to evolve to meet its much greater workload and to hold government ministers to account more effectively.
The committee system would benefit from bringing in elected committee chairs as well as directing more power from Edinburgh so that it is as close to the people as possible. It’s all well and good devolving power from London to Edinburgh, but we need to devolve power to Scotland’s diverse regions to really unlock the nation’s potential.
Since 1999, health and social care has been arguably the most important responsibility of the Scottish Parliament – to this day it remains the Scottish Government portfolio with the largest budget. However, the last 17 years of SNP government have not been kind to the NHS.
A staggering 820,000 Scots are languishing on NHS waiting lists, the worst ever record.
10,000 Scots are waiting for assessments or packages.
And in the last few weeks alone, the city of Glasgow has lost more than 150 jobs in health and social services.
The SNP tell us they are putting record levels of funding into the NHS, but at the start of devolution – under the Labor government – Scotland spent 22% more per head on health than England, today that gap is down to just 3%.
However, in Labour-run Wales, they continue to spend more per head on health than Scotland, despite having a more limited gentry settlement.
The SNP have run the Scottish Government for a lifetime and our NHS is now at breaking point due to their incompetence. While the new First Minister, John Sweeney, would have you believe he is the fresh leadership needed to turn things around, he has been at the heart of their mismanagement since the beginning. He ended up being the first deputy minister tasked with getting the NHS back on its feet in the wake of Covid, but instead delivered £400 million worth of cuts to the health and social care budget.
Since its inception, the Scottish Parliament has enjoyed many policy successes and has undoubtedly brought net benefit to Scotland, with 357 Scottish Parliament Acts now on the statute books, a rate of work that would never have been possible in the House of Commons.
However, the SNP years in government have left the Scottish NHS in a precarious position. Time and again they have taken their eyes off the ball on the vital matter of Scotland’s health, preoccupied with the self-indulgent constitutional punch-and-judy show.
Donald Dewar’s hope on that opening day in 1999 was that MSPs would “never lose sight of what brought us here – the desire to do right by the people of Scotland, to respect their priorities, to improve their lot and to contribute to the common wealth.”.
Well, after 17 years of increasingly stale nationalist rule, it’s time we reset Scotland’s Parliament and Government, to restore the true spirit of that founding ideal.
